Standing
on the shoulders of giants

Judith Mackrell. The GuardianJorge Crecis’s Twelve is irrepressible good fun, with the dancers executing mathematically exact routines while slinging around bottles of water.

Laura Freeman. StandardTwelve is a “dance-sport” piece. Water bottles litter the stage, each with a neon light tube. The company lob, hurl and bowl the bottles like circus jongleurs. It is practised, it is perfect

Luke Jennings. The GuardianThe performers dance as they throw and catch – spinning, leaping, whipping off high-velocity air turns – and the split-second timing and the ever more complex logistics of the choreography force them into a desperate precision. Inevitably, bottles are dropped, but what Crecis is aiming for is not so much perfection as an absorption in the task so total as to lead to a loss of self

Neil Norman. The StageIf Jorge Crecis’ Twelve makes heavy weather of heavy water, it is a fittingly mischievous finale to a very mixed bill

Philippa Newis. BachtrackCleverly crafted and fast licked, Twelve, created by Jorge Crecis, rounds off the evening. Plastic bottles containing florescent glow sticks are thrown between the dancers. They tumble and slide, duck and weave; relentlessly keeping pace with an unending stream of airborne missiles. Bottle are hurled back and forth across the stage in an exchange of friendly fire. Deft team work and razor sharp hand-eye coordination have the audience on the edge of their seats. They work together like the well calibrated mechanism of an expensive Swiss watch. No-one misses a beat. Its showing off, and wonderfully so. This formidable crew thoroughly deserve 18 minutes of unabashed and frivolous attention seeking

David Dougill. The TimesAnother ensemble piece, Twelve, is the programme’s finale. Jorge Crecis specialises in blending dance and sporting movements, and this is a complex athletic exercise for a dozen dancers, throwing and catching 36 plastic water bottles. The dance builds up stunning momentum and intricacy — weaving and knotting, bursting out and leaping. Exhilarating.

Zoë Anderson. The IndependentYou can’t help rooting for the dancers as they sprint and dip into ever trickier combinations.

The tosses are as complex as juggling, as athletic as sports, while Crecis’s sense of stage space and movement keeps this firmly in dance territory.

Rachel Elderkin. Exeunt magazineThe bill closes on a high with Jorge Crecis’ athletic Twelve. A piece built on quick fire reactions, Twelve takes the game of catch to another level. Clusters of water bottles, lit from within by bobbing glow sticks, fill the stage. They are thrown into the air in increasingly daring patterns. Interspersed by bursts of movements it’s at once playful and military – precision and timing being key. As each routine is completed, the audience applaud. Once or twice a dancer misses, but it’s no matter – it only adds to the risk of their game. You will them to catch and, because of that, there are moments where this work has you on the edge of your seat. As they test and tease one another, we finally see these supreme dancers as themselves; team members and competitors in equal measure. It’s a fun, spirited close in which the personalities behind the performers shine through.

Vera Liber. British theatre guideBut it’s the last one that has them exclaiming out loud, Jorge Crecis’s Twelve, an eighteen-minute rhythmic and algorithmic parade or sports ground drill with thirty-six shimmering full plastic water bottles. Bottles are arranged in varying code sequences on the floor, as are the teams.

A game of double dare, speed, co-ordination and timing, and Vicenzo Lamagna’s electro-acoustic score heightens the tension as it triggers each new drill.

Formation crouches, never still, commando training camp, missiles fly, this looks fun, but what if one hit its mark, bottle trajectories longer and longer, crisscrossing in flight, more and more complex.